She jumped and yelped. ‘Oh! I’ll get Mum and Dad.’

My eyes are full of grit and my mouth’s dry. Everything aches.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘What’s happened? Where’s everyone else?’

‘You’ve been sleeping, Alfie. You made it all the way back from that custody centre – God knows how – and I found you in the hedge. You were missing for ages. The doctor came to check you and everything, and you still didn’t wake up properly. You might be going to hospital – they haven’t decided.’

There are things lined up on the bedside table that someone must have brought to tempt me awake. Toast. Lemonade. Grapes. Pieces of a broken-up chocolate bar.

She dived to the door then stopped and looked back at me as if she couldn’t believe I was real. ‘You sleep-talked. You said great bustard, over and over. I thought you were swearing at first, then I remembered Godrell.’

43

Mission

24th September

Someone very important came to see me today, and he apologised on behalf of the whole entire parish council! It was the new head of it. Mr Lombard has retired.

Mostly, getting an apology felt like a squirmy mass of cringey stuff, but the new man was nice. He tried to be quick but kept stopping and starting.

‘Astonishing escalation of events,’ he said, shaking his head (tufty eyebrows joining in). ‘But all’s well that ends … The general rightness of things is …’ He cleared his throat. ‘And all knots are as smooth as a dolphin’s behind now, I hope.’

Lily was avoiding Mum – she was supposed to have cleared her stuff off the table hours ago – but I saw her listening at the top of the stairs and her shoulders were shaking with laughter.

Dad read out the final police report to all of us over pizza. It was some sort of reflecting device on Mr Clemm’s machine that went bang. (That must have been the part that was supposed to attract Whizzy.) They think a fireball formed, and those can reach terrific temperatures. The top of his gadget blew off and landed half a mile away. The police have got it now, but some animals had mangled it, and that’s why nobody found it.

Mum won’t stop hugging me, and Dad keeps smiling and going mushy and repeating what a brainy idea it was to get everything down in that journal.

25th September

If you came to our village along the main road, you wouldn’t notice Halfway Lane. You’d pass the shop and drive out of the village without even glancing up the little road on the left. But if you did take that left fork, and if you drove till you passed the last proper house in the village, you’d see the skeleton wall of Ash House. You’d see right inside to the rooms, like a doll’s house with the door open.